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A PARABLE OF LIFE.

S. M.

A YOUTH had vowed to labour in unfruitful pastures. Heavy was the burthen, comfortless and well-nigh hopeless the toil; the cruel earth brought forth thorns and brambles under his diligent hands, and each seed that he dropped withered ere it had strength to grow up. There was no shelter from the burning noon-day

seemed as though an invisible arm detained him, and though he felt that he could shake it off, an unheard pleading prevented him; as though by so doing, he moved in another direction, but the same unseen obwould inflict some grievous wound. He turned and stacle checked his steps. Then he stood still and marvelled; and his eyes were opened, and he saw that within the circle stood an Angel with a sorrowful face around him there was a bright circle drawn, and and loving eyes. When he moved, the circle moved too; and when he touched the edge and strove to cross it, then came the invisible difficulty, and he kept within the edge. He saw, moreover, that when he

deprecating gesture, in an opposite direction, as though about, but unwilling, to leave him. But at the edge of the circle the Angel paused also, and seemed unable to

sun; for it was a land without trees, and the few saplings which he had planted were sickly and miniature, and it seemed hard to wait till their puny shade should acquire breadth and richness, as most likely they too would die early. And as there were no trees, so like-moved, the Angel moved too, with averted face and wise were there no birds; for those sweet and gentle ones could not live without a nest and a covering; neither was there any water to refresh the parched and cross it, and returned to him again. And a voice said splitting ground. So all the kindly melodies of Nature in his ears, "In a far, quiet place, there is one praying were mute, and the low howl of the wandering wolf, as it came upon the midnight blast, seemed but the fit for thee, and that prayer is the bright circle. Thou utterance of the spirit of the place. The soul of the canst cross it if thou wilt, but it is hard for thee to do so. And till thou cross it, not even thy sins can sepa youth was very desolate, and he had no heart to work. rate thee from the Angel whom that prayer has enHe prayed for blindness and deafness, but the hateful tangle of poisonous herbs was still before his eyes, and circled in its silver line and so preserved for thee !" the voice of the prowling beast still rang in his ears. Then he prayed that his vow might be taken from him, but there was no answer. And the seeds were ready for sowing, and the plough was prepared for his hand, but how should the seeds develope in a soil which gave no nourishment, and of what avail was the plough save to show him that the depths were as unfruitful as the

surface?

And, behold, afar off there was a mountain, and the sides of it were steeped in sunlight. He could see that they were soft and green with abundance of verdure; a thousand colours danced in the sunbeams, as a thousand flowers shook their sweet bells in the morning air, and their fragrance reached even to him, and seemed to invite him to go among them. There was the grateful coolness of spreading trees and the soft hum of stealing waters; there the very winds became music, because they were full of the strains of the wood-choristers. There the grain seemed to spring up into waving corn, almost as it was committed to the earth, and if tares or thorns were among it they were not visible from so great a distance. While in the field where the hapless youth was set to labour, the good plants that were really struggling into life were so few and so scattered, that he could not discern them among the abundance of evil; or, if he did see them, they gave him little comfort, for he believed that they would perish ere they attained their full strength. Then he began to think that he would forsake the barren pastures and go to toil where he might find a reward. "Woe is me!" said he, "wherefore am I thus afflicted? I would give my life for the earth if I could make it fruitful; but it is waste to plough and sow where the soil has no capacity for giving nurture. Martyrdom is but another name for suicide, unless the cause sanctify the martyr. I will arise and depart."

And he arose and would have moved away, but it

Then he felt greatly comforted, and took courage. And he went manfully to labour, under the eyes of that Angel, and by the soft light of that prayer, which seemed to grow brighter by night. And lo! when the morning arose he found a small stream, breaking with difficulty out of the bosom of the stony earth. And he hewed a basin for it, with pain and trouble, and gradually it became a fountain, softening the ground and feeding the weak and weary verdure. And who shall say, that in the end the barren valley shall not be

fairer than the far-off mountain? For the labourer has

not refused to see the growing beauty of the one, because he is too distant to discern the hidden evils of the other. He is working, in fear truly, but also in hope; and the tiny buds are beginning to pierce the soil, and the faded leaves are resuming their freshness; and there is even a solitary bird on the sapling which grows beside him, to cheer him by its notes of timid sympathy, and its whispered promise, that here it will build its nest; and as the grove arises, a nation of songsters shall arise to people it. He has not forsaken his work, therefore for him there shall be rest in the

end.

ON EQUALITY OF PUNISHMENTS.

T. N. H.

Puddledock, a very incarnation of justice, impartiality, Ir was not many months ago that his worship of and other legal qualifications, did sit upon his awful bench, where, for long time, he had been quite a terror to pickpockets, beggars, and other rebels against our condemn, and sentence a veritable nobleman. It was admirable Constitution, and then and there did try, and a decided occasion; in fact, an event. Justice had in old days gone by been represented with a bandage over but latterly it had been thought, whether rightly or her eyes, for fear, as it may be presumed, of accidents, wrongly it skilleth not to decide at this present, that, like the specimens of mesmeric clairvoyance, she had

managed to squint out sideways. Now, however, the majesty of law was to be vindicated. After-ages were to learn that partiality attaches not to a British stationhouse, that the same even-handed justice was scrupulously administered to rich and poor. An opportunity, a decidedly grand opportunity, had offered. The scion of a noble house had, in the exuberance of spirits (forgive the pun, dear reader,) assaulted a policeman. A little while before a poor man had done likewise, and had been punished with imprisonment. Why should the one pay a fine merely, while his poorer brother had been confined in durance vile-one of the same flesh and blood, one of the great human family, as orators are wont to say,one of the same country, and entitled to the same protection and liberty? Would this be just and right, that the poor man should rot in the common dungeon, in manacles and chains, while my Lord puts his hand into his pocket, pays his fine, which he would not miss if he lost it, and goes home to his fashionable amusements, little the worse for his morning's adventure? Forbid it, genius of Rectitude-forbid it, Minos, Aramanthus, Solon, and Cerberus, whose very nature, the dog, abhorred one-sidedness. Let it never be said that here, in the centre of enlightenment, the fountain of justice was polluted! No. Let Europe and the civilized world know for certain, that if my Lord shall violate the laws as Jack the costermonger hath violated them, he shall be punished with the same punishment, and share the same fate. So cogitated the worthy magistrate, and so did his worship proceed to sentence. Lord goes to prison for a week or so, enjoys the company of Jack the costermonger, and of others similarly circumstanced, and the judge is lauded in newspaper, penny magazine, in tavern, and beer-shop, to his heart's content.

If such be the determined judgment of thy mind, dear reader, here stop; for the story is a very nice one, and we have no wish to disturb respectable prejudices. We have no sympathies with the noble culprit, and are only using him as a peg whereon to hang a word or two about equality of punishments. Yet if thou thinkest invincibly as the worthy magistrate did, and as the still more worthy press do, here pause, and content thyself, for we shall only disturb thy equanimity, and go rather to some magazine or paper which deals in politics, and will write for thine especial behoof all manner of nice and eloquent things about the rights of the people, and so forth. If thou hast an earnest zeal for the truth, go forward, for this is the sole object of this paper.

Do not, then, at the very outset, dear reader, increase our difficulty by imagining that we are aiming at the destruction of equality in punishments; for in so doing you would greatly misapprehend us, and, what is far more important, would raise sundry, by no means insignificant difficulties, in your own way. This principle of equality in the dispensation of justice is far too sacred to be thus sacrificed. Its foundations are fixed deep in the most sacred law of Nature; and by no means wise, therefore, would it be to sneer at it, or to denounce the sturdy maintenance thereof, as an entirely popular cry. Indeed, were we to do so, it would not quite succeed, for honest common sense generally manages to find out the right in the end. Therefore, conceive of us as veritable champions of this first sacred principle of right, without which law is not, law cannot be, for it is what Seneca has called it, "the foremost part of equity." Whatever regular system there may be in a code which shuts its eyes to this aforesaid equality, it cannot be called equity, but only might pleasing to act on a fixed plan of its own; for justice recognises, and sacredly preserves, mutual right. It is because this equality is sacrificed and destroyed, that we blame the worthy magistrate; for we cannot be so unjust in our judgment, neither will we be so blind to the conservation of our own consistency, as to deny the noble this same equality which we are demanding for the poor, and, while we

raise somewhat of an outery for the rights of the commonalty, do altogether unjustly to the others. The fact really seems to be, that the worthy magistrate aforesaid, and those who think as he does, are, to speak logically, the victims of an equivocal noun. For there are two kinds of equality, quite distinct each from the other; equality of kind or quantity, and equality of proportion. If punishment is awarded on the principle of the former, injustice will and must, in very many cases, result; the latter, it is here contended, is the natural equality which should be scrupulously maintained. For when it is enforced that there should be equality of punishment for the same offence, it is thereby meant, I suppose, that the punishment should be equal as regards the offenders. Now, if actual inequality be produced by scrupulously adhering to identity of punishment, it is obvious that, in the very endeavour to maintain this inviolable principle of law, we are truly most pertinaciously subverting it. Yet we can easily see how that such is the case in certain instances. A woman and a man commit the same offence; for which it may be that public whipping is one of the statutable punishments. Is it not very evident, even to the short-sighted, that by so sentencing the woman as well as the man, a very much severer punishment is, in fact, inflicted on the former? For the natural modesty and tenderness of the sex causes that it would be, in her case, immeasurably heavier. The result, then, is, that unequal punishments would, by such a sentence, be inflicted, and this for the very reason that they were both the same. So, again, if a private in a regiment strikes his superior, and an officer commits a like offence, is the same punishment inflicted by martial law? Is the officer sentenced, like the private, to a certain number of lashes? If he were to be thus punished, would the punishment be equal? Certainly not; for the different education of the two makes the degradation in the instance of the officer infinitely greater than in that of the private; and, therefore, so to sentence him would be, in fact, to award a different and severer punishment. And so, again, in the punishment for drunkenness, surely, to fine a poor man five shillings, is an infinitely severer infliction upon him than the same fine would be on his richer neighbour. Identity of punishment in this case involves injustice to the poor man. There are, indeed, cases where the magnitude of the crime destroys all notion of proportion; on somewhat the same principle as Draco's, that crime, at the very best, deserves the heaviest punishment, and nothing severer can be exacted under any circumstances. For instance, in cases of murder or high-treason, death is inflicted on rich and poor alike. Nothing less would be proportionate; nothing more would be possible.

But these are exceptions. In ordinary cases respect should be had to the convicted person, his position, and education; for want of due consideration of which a much heavier punishment might be inflicted than either the law or the administrator of the law had intended. Puffendorf, in his Law of Nature and of Nations, (and he is no mean authority), has most clearly enunciated this doctrine. "We must further add this also," he writes, "that all should not be alike visited with the same punishment, and consequently should not by the same means be deterred from the commission of crime. It is easily evident, that as in the general arrangement of punishments, so in the special application of the same to individuals, regard must be had to the character of the delinquent himself, and in it, to those qualities, which, whether from age, sex, position, resources, strength, or the like, may have the power of diminishing, or increasing his sense of the punishment." It is true that in very many cases of delinquency, it is quite possible that the education and consequent knowledge of the parties would greatly aggravate the offence. This was, if I remember rightly, insisted upon in the judgment upon Frost in the matter of the Chartist disturbances; and rightly. Yet the very principle involved in such a distinction requires, that a like

consideration should be shown where the result would be exactly the reverse, and the superior position of the party concerned would fairly be allowed to be a palliation. For if the principle of reference to the position and circumstances of the offender be once allowed, it would obviously be quite one-sided to confine its operation to instances where judicial severity would be thereby increased. The particular application of such a rule is of course a very different matter. Grave difficulties are certainly imaginable; but with these we have no business. They belong to legal casuistry. It is enough if the principle itself be admitted. Neither would the dissimilarity of the punishment for the same offence in the case of two persons in different positions, and of different qualities, physical or intellectual, necessarily involve disproportion, as people fondly seem to imagine. Were this the case, of course the question would be at once set at rest. Nor, again, does the fact, that in particular instances, where law has been professedly administered on such principles, manifest inequality of punishment has resulted, at all invalidate our position. For the indefinite accumulation of such instances would only prove the incapacity of the administrator or the defect of the law, unless it could be shown that such one-sidedness was the proper and necessary result of the principle itself, which it is not. For instance, in the example given at the beginning of this paper, if a small fine had been inflicted on the rich person, while the poor man was sent to prison, the punishment would probably have been unequal. The object should have been, so to fine the former as to make the loss to him as severe as the restraint on personal liberty would be to the latter; so that a proportionate equality would have been attained. But, by inflicting the same identical punishment on both, a severe injustice was committed. For it surely never can be pretended that the discomforts of prison fare and prison lodgment are not greater to the nobleman who has fared delicately his life long, than they are to the poor man, who perchance is even better fed and lodged than he was while he was free. Neither can it be the same, that the one should either be compelled to utter seclusion, or must herd with persons with whom he has little in common, as far as mutual intercourse is concerned, while the other is placed in the midst of his fellows and social equals, with the like to whom he has always been accustomed to associate, previous to his imprisonment.

It may be said that the superior attainments and education of the gentleman gave him an advantage over the poor man; and, therefore, that as the offence was greater, because the hindrances to its commission were more numerous, so ought his punishment to have been more severe. In other words, that identity of crime no more necessarily supposes equality of guilt, than identity, equality of punishment. If this be urged, then the principle advocated in this paper is conceded, and the question would resolve itself into a mere consideration of the particular case for it is thereby allowed, that the punishment is not, ought not to be, equal, and that by making it the same in both cases, it was made purposely unequal, that it might counterbalance the inequality of guilt.

Nevertheless, even in the particular case there is something to be said. For it surely is a mark of strange partiality not to take into account that the policeman is below the nobleman in position and society, his inferior; while he is to the poor man a superior, and as such invested with additional dignity and authority. The natural repugnance, therefore, which the latter had to overcome, must have been very much greater than that which hindered the former; and Puffendorf lays it down as an indisputable canon, that "It in no small degree contributes to a due and proper estimation of offences, to examine how far a person's disposition may have been calculated to lead him to cease from any given crime."

It is evident, therefore, that in this particular case, and in general, the enforcement of identity of punishment for the same offence would be productive of no small injustice. It is as contrary to reason, as it would be in commerce to require arithmetical identity in transfer; though in the latter instance the absurdity would be more apparent. For if for the two shoes of the cobbler, the landlord were required to give two farms, and the jeweller should only receive for his one diamond ring one egg from his poulterer, the confusion and disproportion would be only outwardly more apparent, than that which the same precise identity in judicial punishments would produce. Respect in both cases must necessarily be had to the mutual relation of the two parties concerned, otherwise in the one instance, commerce, in the other, all equity of law, would be utterly annihilated.

And an analogical argument in favour of what has been said, may be drawn from the consideration of rewards. For rewards and punishments follow the same law, and are based on similar principles. Now, surely nothing would be more absurd, nothing more likely to destroy the object of rewards, than to distribute them equally without reference to the position of those who are intended to receive them. In the case of recovery of lost property how differently do people act, when he who has recovered it, and is to be rewarded, is in lowly condition, for what they would do, if he were equal or superior to themselves in rank. That which would be an insult in the latter case, is the proper and expected reward in the former; and, on the other hand, the mere expression of thankfulness, which is all that the gentleman could be offered, would be ridiculed or named as mean and miserly, in the instance of a poor man. The like holds good in those infinitely mightier instances, where the person to be rewarded has saved our life, or that of some near and dear relation. And in the army, how ludicrous a result would ensue from enforcing an identity of rewards! How could an officer consider himself rewarded, if the blue riband or legion of honour, which is offered him, were bestowed on every private who at all distinguished himself. And in division of prize money it would fare ill indeed with the stability of our troops if an equal sum were distributed to officers and men alike. So also how quickly would our titles of nobility lose their estimation, and die a natural death, if every poor or illiterate man, that had done prominent service to his queen or country, should receive one of them. They would be brought very much into the condition of knighthood in the reign of George IV., who is reported to have threatened an unwieldy alderman, who pertinaciously attended his levées, that if the fellow ever came again he would make a knight of him, as sure as he had a head upon his shoulders.

It is indeed curious that the same principle which, in the case of rewards, appears absurd and untenable, should be so strangely advocated in the strictly analogous case of punishments. That there is more cause for the one than for the other, it were indeed difficult to establish; and since, when carefully investigated, the whole reason of things leads us to an opposite conclusion, I think we must attribute its serious maintenance to irrational prejudice, and rank it among those many surprising cases, wherein popular outery and political cant have been allowed to drown the voice of truth and reason. The first impression, the superficial reasonableness, doubtless deceived the worthy magistrate, and, if it be not treason to say so, the very immaculate press. On the whole it may safely be said, that if this aforesaid functionary of English law had perchance pored over Blackstone, Coke upon Littleton, and other yellow-coated volumes with red labels, a little less, and trusted to his doubtless most sound common sense a little more, he would not have been so blinded, as, involuntarily it may be, to sacrifice the awful purity of justice to the dictation of a miserable and altogether despicable cant.

It

behoves all who are the servants of law to remember, that human justice is only venerable so long as it shall show itself to be, as it were, the shadow of God, the expression of His great attribute of justice. Thence does it, must it spring, as from a never-failing fountain. Directly it becomes the slave of popular outcry, and wavers with the breath of man, it is no longer worthy of worship, but sinks into the measureless contempt of the welljudging and the good. Athenian ostracism, when it banished an Aristides, did not exile him, but itself, from the pure air of heaven. The Council of Five Hundred, when it condemned the good Socrates, slew him not, for he lives yet fresh in the hearts of men, but committed a most ignominious suicide. The philosopher it was who condemned his judges, and removed his cause to a higher court, in words full of right and nobleness, confident as he was in his uprightness and honesty of purpose. "I wished," said he, "to make my fellowcitizens happy, and it was a duty I performed by the special command of the gods, whose authority I regard more than yours." And they have even now surely vindicated him from all false witnessings, by the accordant voice of the great human heart.

Of all disrespectable cants, political cant is well-nigh the worst, and when the voice of law finds expression in such vocabulary, it does itself a most fatal injury. He, who gives sentence, must be, as if the mouthpiece of God, and must do His work, fearful of himself, fearless of consequences. Terrible, yea, terrible indeed, is his baseness of condition, who perverts his office to unworthy ends, and so teaches others to despise that awful attribute of God, of which he is the mischievous exponent.

THE CARPENTER AND THE MAGIC STATUE.

WHEN Titus was emperor of Rome, he promulgated a decree, that the birth-day of his son should be kept sacred, and that no one should presume to do any labour on that day under the penalty of death. The emperor soon found that it was far easier to decree than to obtain the concurrence of his subjects in the decree. The law was continually evaded, and the judges and officers were unable to discover the offenders.

Then said Titus, "Call hither Virgil, the magician." Virgil came at the emperor's command, and stood in the presence.

Mighty magician," said Titus, "I have promulgated a law that no one should presume to labour on the birth-day of my son under a penalty of death."

"Thou hast, my lord."

"Know now, that this law is constantly evaded, and that neither my judges nor my officers can discover the offenders."

"What my lord says is true."

"Virgil, we desire you to frame an image; some curious piece of art, which may reveal to us every transgressor of the law."

"It shall be as my lord desires," said the magician. Not long after this, Virgil constructed a magic statue, and caused it to be erected in the centre of the city. By virtue of its secret powers, it acquainted the emperor with whatever was done amiss. Many and many were the persons convicted through the means of its informations, and no man was safe from its knowledge.

In Rome there lived a poor but industrious carpenter, named Focus, who cared little for the new edict, and every day pursued his laborious occupation.

66 Misfortune take thee, thou tell-tale statue !" muttered he, as he lay in bed one night, and thought upon the numerous convictions procured by its means; tomorrow thou and I must bandy a few words."

66

As soon as it was day-break, Focus rose, dressed himself, and went to the place where the statue stood

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placing himself immediately before the figure, he thus addressed it :

"Statue! statue! many of our citizens die daily, by reason of your informations; now take this warning; if you accuse me, I will break your head."

Having thus spoken, Focus returned home to his usual work, though it was the prohibited day. About mid-day the king sent to the statue to inquire whether the law was being duly observed.

"Statue," said the officers, "the emperor demands whether the edict is being strictly observed." "Friends," rejoined the magic voice; "look up, see what is written on my forehead."

They obeyed the commands of the statue, and saw these three lines on his brow:

"Times are altered.

Men grow worse.

He that speaks the truth has his head broken." "Friend," said the statue again, "go tell the emperor what thou hast read."

Now, when Titus heard what was written on the forehead of the statue, he was very wroth, and ordered his guards, and his officers, to watch before the statue, and see that no man did it injury. He bade them also require of the statue the name of the malefactor, and bring him before him directly.

"Declare, O statue!" said the officer of the emperor's guards, "who it is that threatens you."

"It is Focus, the carpenter," rejoined the figure; "he cares not for the edict, and never remits his labour; moreover, he menaces me with a broken head if I disclose his crime."

The guards soon discovered Focus, at work as usual, and dragged him before the imperial presence.

Man," said the emperor, "what is this that I hear of thee? Not only dost thou break the law, but dost also menace the statue, should it declare thy crime."

"It is even so, my lord; I cannot afford to keep the edict; a holiday to me is so much loss. Every day must I obtain eight pennies, and without incessant labour I have not the means of acquiring them. Holidays are well enough for the rich, but for the poor they are too often a curse."

"Eight pennies, Sir Villain-why eight pennies?" "Every day throughout the year I am bound to repay twopence, which I borrowed in my youth; two other pence I lend; two I lose, and two I spend."

"Explain this," said Titus, interested in the man's replies.

"Twopence I repay that I borrowed in my youth; when I was a boy, my father expended daily upon me that sum now he is poor and needs my assistance; therefore I return that which I formerly borrowed." "Thou doest well."

"Two other pence I lend to my son, for his studies, even as my father did towards me, in the hope that hereafter he will do likewise."

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Again thou doest well; but how dost thou lose twopence a day?"

"I give them to my wife for her maintenance; she is wilful, contradictious, and passionate; these two, therefore, are lost to me on account of her disposition." Good again, Focus."

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"The two last pennies I spend upon myself in meat, drink, and clothing. With less than this I cannot exist nor can I obtain these eight pennies without incessant and unremitting labour; therefore, O Emperor, a holiday to me is no blessing, but rather a curse; and thy edict I, for one, cannot obey. You now know the truth; judge dispassionately."

"Friend, thou hast well spoken; go labour at thy trade."

Not long after this the emperor and his son both died, and there was no heir to the throne. Then the people remembered the wisdom of the poor carpenter, and tendered to him the empire. He governed as

wisely as emperor as he had lived as a carpenter; and, at his death, his picture, bearing on the head eight pennies, was deposited among the effigies of the departed emperors.

THE ANNULAR ECLIPSE OF OCTOBER 9TH.1 Ir is not very long since the attention of the public was largely occupied by the rival claims, and we had well-nigh said the disagreements, of philosophers. The very remarkable coincidence of the totally independent calculations of Le Verrier and Adams having led each of them, within a few weeks, or perhaps days, to one and the same result, and thereby to one of the most brilliant discoveries of modern science, must be fresh in the minds of most men. Happily the warfare of scientific jealousy came speedily to an end, and if the July meeting of the British Association had produced no other good effect, this alone would have been sufficient, that it had afforded England an occasion for welcoming Le Verrier as he deserved, and that Oxford had joyfully witnessed the honours accumulated both upon a foreigner and a member of a rival university.

This recollection revives, naturally enough, when we are looking forward to the most generally interesting of all the phenomena to which the planetary system gives rise-phenomena to which we could not look forward at all, but for the published predictions which result from the very accurate state of astronomical science, so far as it bears upon them. The recurrence of a visible annular eclipse, in any one place, must necessarily be very rare; nor would it be likely to happen in any one life-time that the same tract of country should be traversed by the line in which such a phenomenon might be perfectly seen. It is now more than ten years since an annular eclipse was visible in any part of Great Britain.

In May, 1836, that phenomenon was seen in the northern part of our island, and as many persons then thought it worth while to take a journey (at that time far more tedious than at present) into Scotland, in order to witness it, we hope to be doing acceptable service to at least some of our readers, by giving them the best information we are able, as to when and where the annular eclipse to which we are now looking forward may be seen. We will, in the first place, point out the difference between the track of the eclipse of the present year and that of 1836. The latter was central and annular to positions on our globe, of which a very large proportion, no less than 7000 miles out of a path of 10,000 (speaking very roughly) fell upon the sea, and consequently were devoid of interest, except to such vessels as might happen to be in those situations. The line of the eclipse of this month, on the contrary, traverses principally portions of the globe which are thickly inhabited, and where many of our countrymen reside. Singularly enough, the central line of the eclipse of 1836 passed nearly clear of the north of Ireland, then by a very short distance (as it also does on this occasion)

clear of the south.

Generally speaking, the course of the line in which some annular phase was visible in 1836, was as follows: -It commenced about twenty degrees west of the Isthmus of Panama, and crossed that narrow neck of land, the only portion of the continent of America in which it was visible; skirting the north of Ireland, it crossed England centrally about half way between Edinburgh and Dumfries; Perth and Whitby being nearly the northern and southern limits of the annular appearance. Thence passing across Denmark, parts of Poland and Prussia, it ended in the Caspian Sea. In England it was central, or annular, between three and four o'clock

(1) We are indebted to the Editor of the "Guardian Family Newspaper" for the information conveyed in this article.

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in the afternoon. The noon eclipse was at a point about six degrees west of the Azores.

The general course of the eclipse of October next, (bearing in mind that the day is astronomically October 8, but in ordinary reckoning, the morning of Saturday, October 9, and speaking also of the limits of annular phase) will be-commencing between two and three hundred miles west of Ireland, it will be annular (but not central) to about the southern quarter or third of Ireland. It will traverse the south and west of England, embracing in its northern limits Gloucester and Greenwich. Thence it will cross France (including Rouen and Paris within its southern limits, and Amiens, Lille, and Metz within its northern), Austria, Turkey, Asia Minor, and just before entering the Persian Gulf, will be central and annular at midnoon within the Y formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, about twenty-five miles N.W. of Korna. Thence passing down the edge of the Persian Gulf, it crosses Hindostan, entering above Bombay, and keeping above Hyderabad, it crosses the Bengal sea, where it attains its lowest latitude; then, rising again, passes through the Birman and Siamese empires, and ends in lat. 18.29 N., among the mountains which separate this territory from Cochin China. Here it will be central and annular at sunset.

The width of the band enclosed between the northern and southern limits, is about three degrees, measured at right angles to the central line; but in those parts where it is rapidly descending in latitude towards the south-east, if the width be measured along a meridian, it amounts to nearly four degrees. This applies to almost all its course until it leaves the Persian Gulf. During the greater part of the course of the eclipse of 1836 the width of the space between the limits was not above two degrees when measured in the first mentioned manner.

In either case, viz. that of 1836 or of this year, it is but a small portion of this country to which that phenomenon will have been visible, and still smaller in which it will have been seen at all perfectly as a central and annular eclipse. A great many of our readers are, no doubt, perfectly familiar with the causes of the several kinds of eclipses, whether lunar or solar, and some are well acquainted with the mode of computation employed to predict the times and places at which these will be respectively visible. To those who wish for ample information on this latter point, the appendix to the Nautical Almanac of 1836 would be a most practically interesting document; containing, as it does, an investigation of the subject; and explaining the mode of computing eclipses adopted at Greenwich, drawn up by Mr. W. S. B. Woolhouse, Head Assistant in the Nautical Almanac Establishment.

There must be, however, some who read our pages to whom the whole subject is a terra ignota, and who scarcely bear in mind even the essential difference between eclipses of the sun and of the moon; owing to which, those of the former, though of far more frequent occurrence, are far less often seen in any given place.

An eclipse of the moon, consisting, as we see it, of the passage of the earth's shadow across the moon, may be seen at once by all to whom the moon is then visible; in fact, by nearly an entire hemisphere; whereas, an eclipse of the sun, to be visible at any place on our globe, absolutely requiring as an essential condition that some portion of the moon should be between the observer and some part of the sun, it must clearly be more rarely visible in any one place. Still more strongly does this apply to either a total or annular eclipse of the sun, which can only be such to those places lying on or within certain limited distances of the path formed by a line passing from the centre of the sun through the centre of the moon to the earth's surface; the total eclipse occurring when the moon is so near to the earth that its diameter is equal to, or greater than that of the sun; the annular, when it is so far from the earth as to have a less apparent diameter than the sun,

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